Boy Peeling a Fruit

Hi everyone.

I’m busy preparing for our Wednesday night gig at Golden Hare Books, working out which part of Backstreets I should read (if we have time after all our chatting). I’ve done a few reading events now and tend to read the same passages. It’s hard to choose bits of a novel that stand alone, don’t require too much explanation, and don’t give too much away. So far I’ve mainly read sections from the first couple of chapters and they’ve gone down well.

Which is great but some of my loyal (foolish) supporters have heard them several times over and could probably recite them in their sleep. So I’ll see if I can find a slightly different one for Wednesday’s event.

In the meantime, I thought I’d post one of the extracts that I’ve read a few times for those folk who haven’t managed to make it to a reading. Something to keep you going while the book is being edited.

Here it is. The beginning of chapter 2.

Image: Boy Peeling a Fruit by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Wikimedia Public Domain)

2 Boy Peeling A Fruit

At much the same time as Finn was admiring young Davy’s nude torso at the Art School, across town—in a side street two up from Partick Cross—Tuesday McLaughlin was attempting to gain entry to a tattoo parlour that was owned by Finn’s best mate. The shop belonged to Rob Stevenson, a detail to which Tuesday was, for the moment, happily oblivious, intent as she was in finding a lawful way into the premises. The trouble was, from where she was standing, it didn’t look too promising. The sign quite clearly stated the place was open for another hour, but it was closed, no question.

For about the seventh time, Tuesday rattled the locked door and, when it still wouldn’t open, shoved her face up against the window.

The shop was full of stuff she’d have been happy to offload given different circumstances: shelves lined with old medicine bottles and volumes of faded red and green hard-backs; a round mirror speckled with age that would definitely make good money down the antique market; and, on the counter, gleaming under the protection of a finger-print free glass case, a set of brass weighing scales of a quality any dealer would happily pawn their weans for. But, as far as Tuesday could make out, if you were talking actual living breathing life, there was less than what you’d find in your average coffin-dodgers’ coach trip. The only hope for someone who might be able do the business was the limp skeleton hanging from a scaffold by a screw in its baldy head who appeared to be guarding the till, or the baby alligator perched on top of the stationary cupboard with glassy eyes and a stupid grin on its face. Strictly, Tuesday knew she couldn’t complain if the shop was dead—it was the whole morbid thing it had going on that had made her choose it in the first place—but, frankly, if the sign said open, it should bloody well be open.

Frustrated, she rattled the door again. The lock was pretty flimsy, barely holding. If she still had her old ways about her, she might have considered it worth booting the door in and having a run in with the skinny bloke at the till, if only for the scrap metal value of the chemical balance. Instead, as she left, she gave the door a half-hearted kick for old times’ sake, and immediately regretted it when she stubbed her middle toe. Once the numbness had passed, it started throbbing like a tadger.

She was hopping on the white line halfway across the main road, waiting for a break in the traffic, when she heard a shout.

‘Hey, missus.’ Rob was waving to her from under a streetlight at the corner of the side-street. A big bloke with a shaved head and tats on his face was Tuesday’s take. Nobody she knew. Although with his steel toe-caps and pumped-up muscles, she clocked him for the type who reckoned he was hard.

‘Aye, you with the skinny pins. Are you coming in or what?’

Rush hour traffic was passing either side, coughing out blue exhaust fumes around her. Tuesday shook her head. She’d lost the motivation. The shut-up shop had floored her. Whatever the opposite of psyched-up, that was her. Psyched-down or something. It would be easier to disappear into the going-home crowd.

‘Nah, you’ve missed your chance, doll.’

Mind made up, Tuesday waved Rob off, but before she managed to dive through the oncoming traffic, a black BMW came speeding up the main road. The driver was playing with his mobile, steering one-handed, swerving all over the place. For a second, Tuesday swithered on the midline, too late to make the dash. She couldn’t believe it. He was practically on top of her and he hadn’t seen a bone in her body. Fuck that. She wasn’t having it. She held her ground and pumped her bunched fist from her forehead. Dickhead. The car missed her by a sliver. The driver beeped, leaving his hand on the klax—a wanker’s lesson in road safety—and, as the car passed, the sound dropped a semitone and faded into the traffic hum.

‘You okay?’

‘Fine,’ Tuesday said, even though she wasn’t. It did her head in, those fancy tossers who thought they were entitled to make her invisible because they lived inside their fuel-injection, leather-trimmed lives. But even though the near-miss had left her shaky, there was no way she was admitting as much to a bloke who wore his denims that tight.

‘Come on. I’ve put the kettle on.’

Tuesday pulled a face and crossed back over, following Rob past the overflowing bins in the darkened side street. At the shop, he waited for her, holding open the door.

‘Milk and three sugars,’ Tuesday said, as rudely as she could. She may have been quarter his size but it didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of opening a door. Not that she was one of those feminist nut jobs who got offended by basic manners, but this chivalry business annoyed the tits off her. In normal life, the only time a man held open a door for her was when the door in question was attached to a police van.

She was still working out how best to slag him off when Rob bowed elaborately and offered her his arm. ‘Would the young lady care to enter my humble premises?’

Tuesday shoved his arm out of the way and pushed past him. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, pal, that’s not fucking normal.’